First QIK video, an app that lets me stream or record & post video from my iPhone. The future has arrived, I may hold off a little longer on getting a new video camera.

re: Exxon Mobil $11bil in first quarter, record profits according to news media -- Washington Post link:
I filled my gas tank after work, felt somewhat abused at paying $55 to fill up, when I recall that before Bush Jr I paid approx $15 or so. The media, the govt, & def gas co's want us to forget that prices have gone up 4x on speculation primarily and not b/c of lack of supply.
That said, I'm guessing we are near the peak oil point, although some argue we passed peak oil. I guess we can't know until WikiLeaks posts something telling us the truth, since we don't seem to be able to rely on the government or private business to tell us the truth about our own natural resources!!! (WTF???)

I posted this comment in response to The Automatic Earth Article Welcome to the Slaughterhouse, which discusses the 'next Tsunami', namely peak oil & resource wars, and Slaughterhouse Finance referring to Kurt Vonnegut & the dilemma of the global debt burden:
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While I agree with much of the commentary, there is another reality possible.

The notion that 'we' (in this case wealthy consumers) must go to war to battle for all the resources, coupled with the concept that 'we' (the people stuck with huge debts thru spending ... and corruption) must pay back massive global debts are both choices.

Frankly, when Greenspan recommends paying the debts off, and Bush as well, their concern IMO has more to do with their awareness that they are completely culpable for much of both problems.

Bush didn't want the USA to be independent and healthy, but rather dependent and hooked into global commerce like the IMF & World Bank recommend -- focus on exports, let your population starve/suffer, and boost the wealthy class.

Greenspan kept arguing that market forces will correct for all the problems and regulation must be fought always.

And then when they had screwed things up (IMO intentionally) as much as possible, they got a *GREAT* interest free loan from the public coffers to boost their wealthy friends portfolios while gutting the USA's solid financial backbone.

And now we are not bailing out our economy which is under assault by 3 wars & inflated military spending, tax cuts for billionaires, sharply lowered home values and less jobs for workers, and more curious coincidences.

When the Republicans threaten to shut down the govt or not open the debt ceiling, it's b/c they live in the dream world where they will survive on bottled water for years while the poorest eat eachother in the streets (seen Book of Eli?), or they figure Armagedon is overdue.

And I say all this b/c we have a choice as human beings -- to abandon an economic system which obviously is rigged to extract wealth to the top (as Karl Marx showed so clearly) and find another metaphor for global distribution of goods & services, and improve balance.

THANK YOU BOLIVIA for your short-term work around, which is to assign rights and values to those creatures which can't speak to defend themselves, namely animals & some green areas.

We all know the metaphor of "does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if no one hears it?"

But do we all understand the metaphor that "in modern economics, raw materials and natural resources have zero value unless they can be exploited, commodified, and consumed in a marketplace"?

I emailed the following to Pacifica Board & new interim KPFA managers Andrew Phillips and Carrie Core,

I'm a KPFA listener and supporter who has paid dues for more than 10 yrs (except for a short stint when I was on unemployment in 2008/2009). I'm also originally a KPFK listener as I'm from LA.

I'm very disappointed with the heavy-handed management at KPFA recently, which is completely disregarding both the community and the staff.
While there is obviously a dispute about who gets on the air, perhaps the best way to resolve some of these issues would be by considering the feedback of the listeners & staff, as well as the executives?

Because of annoying recent changes at KPFA, including bumping Democracy Now to 7 from 6am and canceling my fav KPFA show 'the Morning Show' quite arbitrarily, and putting in Al Jazeera English (which I find surprisingly lacking in content vs Democracy Now), I am now feeling 'forced' to listen via Internet to KPFK & WBAI to hear content that I like & is useful. The upside is I learned I can stream either to my iPhone (TuneIn Radio app) and they also have other shows which are more hard-hitting than KPFA as well. I was surprised....!

While we are under attack in the USA by the Right Wing & Tea Baggers, why am I being forced to listen to Al Jazeera?!?! I'm interested in the Middle East, certainly, but I'm far more interested in the USA!!!

I really want a show like Democracy Now, which covers real news in-depth every day, and the Morning Show which expands on local & national news and had great interviews and perspectives. Switch your all-volunteer programming back to off-hours and late nights! Why am I listening to the worst of KPFA at 7am-8am?!?!

Frankly, I'm quite annoyed -- this year when I donated I requested that my money only go to KPFA and not Pacifica. The person taking my donation did not know if he could do that, but I encouraged him that we could.

If you look at the history of mismanagement at Pacifica, it includes so many bad decisions, bad policies, & bad attempts at executing bad policies, that I'm surprised Pacifica is still the mother ship. I believe KPFA needs to become more independent of Pacifica bc the organization is so dangerous, so toxic, and runs so counter to the needs & wants of local listeners.

In closing, please do not mess with Democracy Now -- put it back to 'live' at 6 & rebroadcast at 9. Those are iconic timeslots. Then give us a local & national news show with editorial / opinions from Left Wingers (like the Morning Show!!!)

And don't get me wrong, I like 'Hard Knock Radio', but it is a niche show which probably focusses less on content interesting to ALL LISTENERS and more to under-represented groups, right? So keep it in the evening slot!

Why doesn't the management listen to the paid listeners? The KPFA board is pursuing a stupid and petty agenda, which will result in either hurting KPFA more than it already has, damaging Pacifica (more than it's shoddy rep, but like taking private corporate underwriting as we are learning now), and moving listeners to other few & far between options like KQED & NPR.

Wow, what a bunch of hate-spewing commentators! Gee, are you all so 'great' and Michael Moore is not b/c he hired non-union people to shoot his film? As someone that has worked with several unions and for unions, I say --> SO WHAT?

No one is perfect, and he is by no means perfect. But what he does well is tell a story that so many ignorant buffoons (probably some of you included) had no idea -- that the US medical system is cruel and inhuman and looks like crap compared to Europe or Canada, that Bush & Cheney did some unusual shenanigans around 9/11 (and before after, like lying about Iraq & leaking a secret agent's ID to the news & cheating on the voting machines), that the financial failure was caused by greed, that private corporations are predators upon their workers and their locales of operation, etc etc.

Unlike you idiots, who make fat jokes & think you are making critical commentary, Michael Moore actually is taking action and getting things done. And he never insults people (like Bush Jr) for being idiotic moronic jerks!

So, you are making less than $40 an hour? Well, don't blame the unions! Unions caused labor income to go up, work hours to go down, and profit going to the upper ranks to drop. Paying union labor (or non-union labor, like In&Out Burger, Peets' Coffee, etc) a decent wage and medical coverage does not make require your end-product to be more expensive. It can affect the price, but it doesn't have to.

What makes your products more expensive is excessive executive compensation of $1 million and up (which is more than $20k per week) and large profits going to share-holders.

I agree that some union jobs are overpaid relative to the work done. But so what? How many executives do nothing but sexually harassing employees while being paid $500 per minute? Or hwo about the executives who fail their company and make it go bankrupt while collecting their huge salaries?
Frankly, I don't care if a cop or fireman is paid well, or if the guy screwing the bolts into my car is paid enough to pay attention.
But you FOOLS who blame unions for the USA's financial problems have everything backwards.

Big business (executives, board of directors, & shareholders) want to maximize profit at the expense of labor compensation, seeing it as an unnecessary cost to be minimized. This is why we have sweatshops & child labor & prison labor. Unions want a fair (at least 'livable') wage paid to employees, regardless of what they are doing.

When you insult a worker doing a job like picking fruit or screwing in bolts or cleaning toilets, consider this -- would YOU rather do that job? And secondly, is it such a bad thing that the worker doing that hard job gets enough money that they can feel like they are doing right by their families?

One of the commenters here said they had a college degree -- well good for you! But guess what? It's good for getting you a job where the company won't want to pay you what you are worth, in order to push the profit upwards towards the executives and away from you! And you can whine all you want about workers below you charging too much, but you'll be yelling at the wrong people.

The current financial crises were caused by rich bankers stealing money from middle class & poor people by issuing loans which should have been illegal or at least unacceptable. But instead they were playing with other people's money and they took chances, and lots of people jumped in for the ride. But when the housing values started to drop, the government stepped in and bailed out the richest, not the poorest. Homeowners lose, bankers pocket their money and spend millions on lobbyists to move on & not look back. Zero criminal prosecution for billions of dollars lost by stealing, by negligence, by not doing their jobs of due diligence while pocketing millions of dollars!!!
Guess what? If no one goes to jail for fraud over this, it will happen again! (Have you noticed all those commercial real estate vacancies, by the way?)

And you people want to blame the workers for this?

So if you want to blame and accuse, go after the real criminals. Michael Moore is a great filmmaker (and yes, he uses spin. But so what? Fox is 99% spin and 1% facts, Michael Moore is 5% spin and 95% facts) and story teller, and he is not the powerful 'overlord' whether he has $50mil or $500 mil. He's telling the truth about the people with so much money that htey measure their wealth in the billions, in multiple currencies and assets, and they own the war machine (The Carlyle Group, Haliburton, Bechtel), they own the oil machine (BP is only one of many including Exon, Shell, Texaco, etc), and soon they will own your water.

It upsets these wealthy people to be forced to spend their money on social welfare and social good. They'd rather have the FREEDOM to spend 'their money' as they like. That's why they are fighting taxes and government social spending (social security, medicare, medicaid).

WHY?
Because the uber-rich don't care if you die young, if you suffer in misery in the street impoverished, if you lose your income in a oil spill or environmental nuclear mistake, if you can't pay your medical insurance, or if you are homeless.

When you have $100 in your pocket and won't give a homeless guy a dime, that is how the ultra-wealthy feel about the working class and the poor people. Who cares, they are just scum anyway! Someone else will deal with it, or maybe that person will just die & leave me alone.

This is why they don't want you to know what is really happening; they want to keep you blind, divided, and conquered. You probably don't know what Smedley Butler did to G. Bush Sr's grandfather, a nazi-supporting banker & fascist, either.

"In November 1934, Butler told the committee [Congress] that a group of businessmen, saying they were backed by a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers and others, intended to establish a fascist dictatorship." And guess what? Bush now has a private army of Blackwater mercenaries (rebranded Xe Consultants) and other CIA mercenary organizations who don't need American democratic approval b/c they operate under a black budget of drug money and CIA 'secret treasury'.

So if you blame Michael Moore for your woes, you are a FOOL. Blame the Bushes, blame the CIA, blame the uber-rich. Who has killed millions of people, & who is making movies trying to make people wake up?

Jesse Ventura is a hero of the USA, I believe. He's a 'rogue outsider' who has the courage and passionate commitment to speak truth to power. Jesse was on Piers Morgan's CNN show. Piers Morgan is a horrible interviewer -- he has his own agenda & won't allow the interviewee a chance, and now way would he consider seeing the world from their viewoint. Piers attempted to challenge Jesse a lot, stopped him from finishing answers, contradicted him, mistated his position to counter it simply, laughed at him, and actually dared to called him a coward.

When so few in the USA say what Jesse says, but so many of us know some of it to be the truth, insulting Jesse for being a true patriot is a sad thing. If Piers could grow a pair and confront the power structure -- go after a Tea Bag idiot, or a Republican moron, with similar vindictive attacking questioning, but he can't.

What's disgusting to me is that Piers Morgan is the coward, the wimp, the butt-kisser, the sellout -- but Jesse didn't respond to Piers' lack of manners b/c Jesse has manners. He's a gentleman on top of all the other stuff!

The only thing on Piers side is that he had Jesse on and let Jesse speak a bit about what's true -- to discuss 9/11 coverup & that 9/11 was not only planes attacking the USA, that he accused Cheney of knowing about attacks (& possibly helping), that Jesse got to call the USA a fascist country, Jesse's show had an accusation of Obama as being a former CIA agent (which Jesse did not explicitly acknowledge), and so much other great stuff.

I acknowledge Jesse for not wanting to pound Piers Morgan's head -- but in some ways, Piers is a good interviewer for Jesse Ventura, b/c Piers (who is acts as if he's a highly educated Englishman working for CNN) is actually completely ignorant of the gaps in media coverage and ignorantly claims that the problem with conspiracy theories is that once you buy into one you may believe many. The flaw in that argument is that what if one or more of those theories are actually true -- do you throw it out b/c other ones (like aliens in Area 52, or CIA assassinating JFK) seem too far-fetched? Jesse made the point about being in-favor of WikiLeaks and very concerned about Bradley Manning's health. Also, Jesse criticized the use of torture and Guantanamo. THANK YOU JESSE!

I did not know Jesse is suing the TSA for violating his 4th Amendment Rights, but it's a great case -- he has a metal hip and he was a Mayor, Governor, and an navy veteran. His point is that when he flies he will always trigger the metal detectors & thus always be sexually assaulted by the TSA, and there is no reason to do this. I agree, but it should go further -- no one should be forced to be searched / probed by the TSA. The USA needs to fix it's foreing policies so no one is incentivized to do harm to citizens here -- rather than killing civilians all around the world in an effort to take over more of the resources of the Earth that the USA has no right to steal & use.

Piers Morgan, you are officially (from rekzkarz) a condescending douche-bag, a cocky ignorant wanker, a dweeb, and a bad interviewer -- but you had Jesse Ventura on your show and let him speak a bit on some things (and he was pitching his new book), so you're not THAT bad of a douche...

Sidenote: I chose today to remove all the Google Ads when I saw a right-wing anti-Obama ad appear on my blog! Don't think I'll be losing too much revenue. HA (Not that I'm a big fan of Obama, but he's better than the Neo-Con Fascist White Aryan Racist party (aka Republican Party). Obama may not be progressive, he may not forward the left-wing agenda, he may not improve life quality in the USA for the poor -- BUT they can't take his blackness away, and there IS a black family in the White House right now in a country that imported millions of black slaves, tortured raped & killed millions, and never apologized for it. So whatever happens, the media-manipulating multi-billionaires can't un-black-ify him! (Or maybe they can! They are surprisingly effective! NO!!!))

Just signed up for ScriptFrenzy 2011, the 'competition' against yourself' to finish a screenplay in 1 month!

The month is April, the time is NOW -- hey, you could be doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers' Month), which is a lot harder IMO -- write an entire (rough draft) for a novel in 1 month!

For a feature screenplay, 120pages is quite a lot (some might say more than 88pgs is too much), but when you get rid of the blank spaces for formatting, you're only looking at ~ 30-40 pages of actual writing.

(*R)Evolution is NOW

A 'Death Kulture' is not the only way humanity must exist on Earth! When people say they are 'conservative', ask them what from their Western History are they trying to conserve? Do they know their history, the real history of the USA?
(A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is an incredible history book which tends to open the average US Citizen's eyes.)

Don't let anyone steal YOUR VISION of humanity's evolutionary destiny: as caretakers and guardians of Earth/ Eden, creators of a positive reality, or whatever you choose. Our visions are materialized by our lives!

Fellow humanity, we can choose our own path -- without the corrupt rulership of the past influencing or dominating! Regardless of what you may have heard, humanity is constantly improving itself. We can shake off our past shackles of exploitation and move into our true power!

The (*R)evolution (radical evolution) against oppression may not be televised, but it's being streamed into your mind -- starting NOW!